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Text: Liu Weixi
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introduction
The Sui Dynasty, under the leadership of Emperor Wen of Sui Yang Jian, successfully unified the division of the Northern and Southern Dynasties and realized the reunification of China. Driven by large-scale infrastructure projects, legal reforms, and cultural prosperity, the Sui Dynasty entered a period of relative strength and prosperity. However, it was during this period of strength that the fate of the Sui Dynasty went in an unexpected direction.
Dynasties in Chinese history often experienced the law of prosperity and decline, but the Sui dynasty ended its glory in a very different way in just 38 years.
The moment the Sui Dynasty fell, it was as if a huge storm suddenly struck, shattering this once glorious empire in an instant.
(Faint Jun Yang Guang film and television image)
This precipitous collapse has led one to wonder if the rulers of the time had been more focused on the sustainable development of the country and more careful in their policies, would the Sui Dynasty have been able to maintain its strong position and bring more lasting prosperity to Chinese history.
1. Yang Jian was over-mythologized
When we evaluate the fall of the Sui Dynasty, we often focus on Yang Guang's sins, find out all the negative words to criticize him, and even create an idiom called "Cannan Mangosteen and Difficult to Write" in order to list his sins.
And for his father's reign, he has no need to praise him, as if his father, Emperor Wen of Sui, Yang Jian, is the greatest emperor in the world.
(Emperor Wen of Sui Emperor Yang Jian)
The reason for this perception is explained in psychology by a so-called "contrast effect", that is, some opposing elements of the psychological content tend to be strengthened by contrast.
For example, objectively speaking, Yang Jianfang may have 85 points among the emperors of the past dynasties, which is definitely not a perfect score, but compared with his son Yang Guang's 20 points, it is a proper full score.
Let's first take a look at how Yang Jian founded the Sui Dynasty.
It took only ten months for Yang Jian to ascend to the highest point of power in the Northern Zhou Dynasty to establish the Sui Dynasty as the emperor of the classic Zen throne.
(Still)
There are only two possibilities:
1. He is a genius who is unique in the world, and it took only 10 months to sweep away all the hostile forces in the court, monopolize all the power, and also won the trust of the emperor to soar like a rocket, and then successfully sealed the Zen.
2, he was lucky to cast a good tire, before him his fathers had been working for many years to control the court of the Northern Zhou Dynasty, and it was his turn to take over, his parents were hindered by the emperor's favor, it was not easy to do it, and the younger generation had no psychological burden.
(Yang Zhong)
Historical sources point to the latter.
As early as the Western Wei Dynasty, Emperor Wen of Sui's father, Yang Zhong, was reused by Yuwentai and became one of the Kaifu generals under him.
And Dugu Xin, the father-in-law of Emperor Wen of Sui, is even more heavyweight, and the highest level of ancient ministers is generally the elders of the Three Dynasties. And Duguxin is not only the patriarch of the Three Dynasties, but even the ruler of the Three Dynasties, ranking one of the Eight Pillar Kingdoms.
It is precisely because Yang Jian was born at the core of the family that the Northern Zhou Dynasty of the Sui Dynasty was able to be so bloodless and excessively smooth, because this was a transfer of power within the ruling class. Sima Guangdu commented: "There is nothing easier than this to win the country."
And what did Yang Jian do with the Yuwen family who cooperated so much? He killed all the direct descendants of Yuwentai!
(Dugu Xin)
It is unkind to kill the former monarch who has been on the throne, because he can't control it, he kills people, he is a young man, and he kills it, and he doesn't do anything perfectly, and he actually misses a princess to marry the northern Turks, causing a big disaster in the future, and it is unplanned.
Externally, he sent his youngest son Yang Liang, the king of Han, and Gao Xi, the prime minister, to go to Goguryeo, but they did not win, and it can even be said that they were defeated, and they were forced to sue for peace and then left this hidden danger, which also gave their son Yang Guang the motive to seek revenge against Goguryeo in the future.
In this way, Yang Jian left four sinkholes for Yang Guang: the Xiongnu in the north, who were persuaded by the princess to take revenge on the Central Plains in the future, Goguryeo in the northeast, the resentful family in his heart, and the biggest pit was that Yang Guang deceived him into choosing him as his heir.
2. The son inherits the father's business
After Emperor Yang Guang of the Sui Dynasty succeeded to the throne, he also adhered to his father's concept of cutting grass to eradicate the roots, but the difference this time was that he attacked his own brother Yang Yong, who was the emperor as soon as he became the emperor, and killed Yang Yong and all of Yang Yong's sons.
After calming down the hidden dangers that could threaten him internally, and completely securing the position of the emperor, he turned his eyes to external threats and began to take action against the hostile forces in the north.
As the saying goes, the soldiers and horses go first before the grain and grass are moved, so he began to build the canal, yes, it is the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal.
In this way, the construction of a Grand Canal stretching for more than 2,700 kilometers from Luoyang in the west, Youzhou in the north, and Yuhang in the south, began.
(Goguryeo soldiers)
A huge complex of buildings like this, which can be called a wonder of civilization, would have taken twenty or thirty years to complete under the productivity of ancient times.
However, Yang Guang, who was anxious and overjoyed, actually asked for the completion within 10 years because he didn't know whether it was to quickly complete his desire to attack the north, or for his selfish desire to go down to the south of the Yangtze River to play. Later, I was so anxious that I couldn't wait for the frequent increase in the number of people who were requisitioned, and it was completed in the last 7 years.
Seven years after completion, the history of blood and tears behind it is the shattering of two million similar people on the river beach and millions of families behind it.
(Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal)
During this period, the people's grievances were boiling, and the peasant uprisings were frequent, such as the Wagangzhai Uprising, the Shandong Wang Bo Uprising, and the Hebei Dou Jiande Uprising. If you refer to romance novels, it has reached as many as "eighteen roads against the king, sixty-four roads of smoke and dust".
Fortunately, his father carried out the imperial examination system, and a large number of low-level people became middle- and lower-level officials, and they were still very grateful and loyal to the imperial court, and the grassroots control ability was also strong.
This situation of balanced confrontation between officers and soldiers and the rebel army was not broken until Yang Guang's expedition to Goguryeo, because a new force joined in - the aristocratic group.
(Accounts of the tragic construction of the Grand Canal)
Yang Guang once again requisitioned a large number of troops totaling 1.13 million, known as 2 million to the outside world, to conquer Goguryeo.
In the past, most of the troops were from the militia, but because the construction of the Grand Canal was almost done by him, the troops recruited this time also included the private soldiers and government soldiers who were drawn from the princes and princes, which was equivalent to threatening the interests of the aristocratic group itself.
The key is that the battle stinks again, with an almost crushing force - 300,000 army and 200,000 sailors, as a result, the strategic mistake fell into Goguryeo's trick of surrendering, and was attacked by water, and the 300,000 army was directly almost wiped out, and only a few thousand people fled back to the rear.
This move made Yang Xuangan and Li Mi completely unbearable, and took advantage of the fact that the army was heading north and the rear was empty, and they directly raised troops in Luoyang to steal their homes.
(Ancient)
Yang Guang, who was far away in Goguryeo, never thought that his own nephew and the nobles who were reused would betray him.
If the uprising of the displaced people everywhere is just a class contradiction, then Yang Xuangan's rebellion indicates that there are also irreconcilable contradictions within the ruling class, and the aristocratic group also has great opinions about Yang Guang.
3. Flee to Yangzhou
Yang Xuangan's rebellion fired the first shot of the rebellion of the aristocratic group of the family, coupled with what Yang Guang's father did back then, he had already made a feud with the aristocratic group, and now Yang Guang really can't laugh.
However, the emaciated camel is bigger than the horse, and the combat effectiveness of the forbidden army of the Sui Dynasty is still quite strong.
(Luoyang)
But once bitten by a snake for ten years afraid of the well rope, Yang Guang no longer trusted Luoyang after this toss, and was ready to relocate to his fiefdom Yangzhou, where he had been operating for many years, and it was indeed the only place he could fully trust.
However, if the emperor abandoned the capital and fled, what would the people think? At this time, those low-level petty officials who relied on the imperial examination all persuaded Yang Guang not to go to Yangzhou, and to stabilize the people's hearts in Beijing.
After he decided to go to Yangzhou, there were four officials from the ninth to sixth grades recorded in the history books alone, and these were loyal officials who came up from the bottom to repay his father Yang Jian's kindness.
But Yang Guang insisted on going his own way, and once again abandoned the basic plate of the imperial examination that supported him last.
(Still)
Yang Guang's visit to Yangzhou once again not only completely lost the support of the people, but even lost the support of the military group.
After Yang Guang led the forbidden army south, the troops at the front were empty, and there were only more than 10,000 people left.
The famous general Zhang Xutuo took more than 10,000 people, divided into three columns, each batch of about 3,000 people, rushing left and right, night and day, breaking through. However, in the end, it failed to break out of the encirclement.
What's even more fatal is that future fierce generals such as Qin Shubao and Luo Shixin, who later shined in the Romance of the Sui and Tang Dynasties, were either captured in the breakout or cornered and surrendered to Wagang.
In the end, after two years of lingering in Yangzhou, he was strangled to death by one of his right and left hands, Yu Wenhua, ending a life of great sin.
(Yangzhou)
We now summarize why other dynasties all fell and fell, but the Sui Dynasty perished in strength.
In fact, the Sui Dynasty was not destroyed at all, and its power was inherited by the Tang and continued to carry forward. Because Tang Guogong Li Yuan is Yang Guang's cousin, he is actually a family.
Yang Guang's father Yang Jian seized power from the aristocratic group, and then it was the aristocratic group that made the military balance of the world unbalanced, and finally strangled Yang Guang's culture and actually the aristocratic group.
It can be seen that the Sui Dynasty is not the Sui Dynasty of the Yang family, but the Sui Dynasty of the aristocratic group, and the Yang family did not satisfy the aristocratic group, so they changed to sit on the country, so they chose the Li family, which was later Li Tang.
(Tang Guogong Li Yuan)
Resources
WEN Jingsong. Emperor Wen of Sui and Emperor Yang of Sui: Reading Historical Puppets, Seeking Knowledge, 2013
YANG Jintao. Emperor Yang of Sui: The Unity of Great Achievements and Extravagant Losers, Decision and Information, 2013